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Dear Dolly Mama,
Why do bad things happen to good people? Just how random is life?
Here’s my case. It involves a monk, a birdwatcher, and a golfer.
Brother Roger, the Swiss Protestant theologian, founded the powerful community of monks in Taizé, in eastern France. It became a worldwide ecumenical movement, a powerful center for spirituality, which had an enormous impact on many, including me. It was like plugging yourself into a new source of power whenever you went. I called it rewirement!
With his group of monks – including Lutheran, Anglican, Evangelical, Roman Catholic – he inspired literally thousands of people, with prayer and song and beautiful action on behalf of the oppressed.
Brother Roger was stabbed in the throat during an evening service in his church by a woman who was attending the ceremony. He died almost immediately. This atrocity happened in 2005. The name of the woman was never released due to medical attention to her obvious mental health status.
Tiger Woods, a great golfer, just nearly died during a car accident going down a hill near Los Angeles. His car rolled over three times. He has survived, undergoing major, life changing surgery on his lower limbs.
The criminal case between Amy Cooper, a white woman who called the police on a Black birdwatcher in Central Park, dropped the charges, leaving a lower charge. The single misdemeanor charge sentenced her to five therapy sessions on how racial identities shape people’s lives. This fairly normal process and rubric of restorative justice was put in play because the man she racially accused didn’t want retribution.
Amy Cooper told the police, “There’s an African American man threatening my life.” He had asked her to leash her dog.
Christian Cooper, the bird watcher, said, “I don’t know if her life needed to be torn apart. She already lost her job. There are more important issues to talk about with regard to racism.”
Why was a man standing at an altar stabbed? Or a man who was bird watching racially accused? Is there any chance she would have called the cops if he were white? Or why is a famous golfer all of a sudden in surgery?
What is going on here? It makes me not want to bother to be good. Or to make plans. Or even to make arguments or ask questions, like I do here.
Bothered
Dear Bothered,
You are right to give high regard to the role of the random in life. Truly, we never know what is going to happen when we wake up in the morning. My new car was totaled by an 8-point buck running in front of it one Wednesday morning on the Taconic parkway. I was nearly totaled too. I’ll never forget the antlers trying to pierce the bag that inflated to save me. I was also run over by a drunk driver in Tucson one Thursday. And then there was the breast cancer, which 1 out of 7 women has so I can’t really claim that as random.
It is also random that I had such good coffee this morning or that I will have good sausage for dinner. And why do so many of us survive run-ins with deer, such that when you arrive at the hospital in a full body suit, they say, “Another deer.” Out loud, as if you couldn’t hear them objectifying your condition.
Einstein said there were two kinds of people. One thinks there are no miracles. The other thinks that everything is a miracle.
I’ll never know why I’m so lucky and others are not. Or why, with so many severely mentally ill people afoot, one goes off and the other does not. Or why, with so many racists around, some get caught and others get off. Not knowing doesn’t mean we don’t care. It just means we don’t know. I know it’s embarrassing. It’s really embarrassing to wake up in the morning, stare at your toothbrush and not know if you’re going to lose your wisdom teeth, or when you might lose your wisdom teeth.
Noticing how random good things are may make us more randomly kind and less randomly mean. Random acts of kindness anyone?
Dolly
Dear Dolly Mama,
My church building and I are going through a rough patch. The old magic is gone. She doesn’t even lift up her eyes when I come in the door. Even my old dog does that. What happened to the romance? Where did the lust go? What shall we do?
Should we go into counseling?
We’ve been together for a long time. I just don’t feel like he/she/they/it is meeting my personal needs. I don’t feel understood. I don’t feel recognized. There is never a kind word – always call the plumber, dust the corner, put a bucket down because the roof is leaking. Always something else. Rarely a quiet seat in the pew.
During worship, instead of worshipping, I make lists enumerating the patches in the ceiling that need paint. She/they/he/it have really let themselves go. Why? Was it me? Did I get too overweight, too dumpy, too down in the dumps? Or was it their mother? She was always SO bitchy. Or their father. He was always SO judgmental. Never thought anything was good enough.
Plus, that new pastor. She doesn’t come to the potlucks with a dish. He never shows up at the women’s auxiliary or remember to thank the people who bring the flowers. God, how I wish the damn building would bring me flowers instead of me having to lay out all the cash.
If we go into counseling, there will be less money or time available for date night. Plus, the last 18 times we went into counseling, we didn’t like the counselor.
Remember that one who wanted us to remove the pews and set up a dance hall in the meeting room? Or the one who suggested a complete dedowdy-ization, a putting away of all the old furniture and getting new? How would Auntie Mame feel if we gave away her old couch, the one she gave for the youth room, on which a lot of kids made out but very few adults could abide sitting on, for fear of bugs? Or what about that chowder pot that Auntie Jane always used? She did die 20 years ago. But still. The pot isn’t that beaten up. And I know we should paint the radiators but when Uncle Joshua painted them in 1942, he thought the paint would last and never chip. No one ever told him that it did chip, due to the heat that came up through the radiators. How would Uncle Joshua feel if we repainted them? Plus, the new painting won’t last either. Plus, we’d have to do the painting on date night so wouldn’t that just ruin the counseling?
Rough Patch
Dear Rough Patch,
Why don’t you just carry on just the way you are? Bored, out of love, counting the patches on the ceiling? There is no reason really not to. If you try hard to “fix” this relationship, it probably won’t work. Plus, the fact that you have stuck with it so long probably means you like it this way. Out of sorts. Unkempt. Something to complain about at the end of the day. Look at how many details you are STILL remembering, details that make your case that nothing really works.
But do be careful: DO NOT attend another church. You could be tempted to cheat on your old lover. And that would be as stale a theology as your current building already presents you regularly. You are a fall risk. You could fall in love. Therefore, I suggest you sit still and just make do with what is clearly already done.
On the other hand, if you find me just too pessimist, I understand. I’m looking for a new date too. My new building may be in a forest or under a canopy or in a tent in the parking lot. It might even be the day we go back to place-based worship, and I remember how much I love that unpatched ceiling, that old couch, the chowder pot and the radiator’s ability to still hiss.
Dolly
Who is the Dolly Mama?
The Dolly Mama is a spiritual version of Dear Abby. Her intention is to combine the irreverence of Dolly Parton with the surrender and non-attachment beloved by Buddhists. She wants to let go of what can’t be fixed – in either self or others – and fix what can by applying the balm of humor.
She is a spiritual handyperson, a soul mechanic, a repairer of broken appliances. Every now and then the combination of letting go and hanging on achieves sufficient balance for an improvement in spiritual posture, stronger spine, and personal peace. The Dolly Mama is not her day job. By day, she works as an ordained United Church of Christ and American Baptist pastor of a regular, if edgy, congregation.
